Paleoecology Blogs

Don’t forget the Deevey Award!

NOTE: ESA2014 is all wrapped up. If you didn’t apply, you didn’t win!

If you are a graduate student, or have completed your Ph.D within the last 9 months, and you are attending this year’s ESA to present, don’t forget to apply for the Edward S. Deevey Award. The Deevey Award is presented to the nominee with the best presentation in paleoecology at the annual ESA meeting (this year in Sacramento [thanks Hank]).

Edward Deevey was a major contributor to our understanding of lake systems through time and moved paleolimnology from a broadly qualitative to a quantitative science, contributing to the widespread use of 14C as a tool in modern paleoecological studies. He was also the first to publish a pollen stratigraphy for northeastern North America (Deevey, 1939) as G. Evelyn Hutchinson‘s second Ph.D student. From Yale, Deevey continued his distinguished career through multiple postings across the United States, at Yale, Rice, Woods Hole and elsewhere.

Figure 1. The first pollen diagram for the northeastern United States, from Connecticut. Published by Edward Deevey in 1939. It also looks like some paleo-Comic Sans lettering

Deevey’s studies mark a major milestone in North American paleoecology, as they brought together both multi-proxy analysis and deep ecological understanding of lake systems, founded on a broad survey of both paleoecological and neoecological data.

More information on Deevey can be found from his National Academy of Sciences biography (here)

If you are a paleoecology grad student, or recent graduate and you will be attending ESA be sure to submit your application by August 1st. You can email or send the completed application form (Word or PDF) and a copy of your abstract to the Deevey Award Committee Chair at Deeveyaward@gmail.com.